Thursday, February 25, 2010

I have been using Adobe Lightroom for a while now and really like it. When I import photos, I sort them on disk under My Pictures in a subdirectory named for the year and a subdirectory named for the date. In Lightroom they are sorted by year and date. So a photograph taken on November 13, 2009 would end up in My Pictures/2009/2009-11-13. That same photo in Lightroom can be found under Photos > 2009 > 2009-11-13. As time permits, I add keywords but I am really bad about not tagging them.

Lately, I have been grumbling quietly to myself about the directory structures that I am using. "What if I can't use Lightroom for some reason? How will I find a particular photo?" It is a very good question that has been troubling me because there have been a few times where I could not use Lightroom (all things that I broke).

Why did I use dates? I do not have a perfect memory. How am I supposed to remember that I took this awesome photo of my daughter on September 12, 2009?

Today, I received notification of a new blog post by Aaron over at Single-Serving Photo about Lightroom Organization in which he describes how he imports his photos to disk and Lightroom using categories, sub-categories and then dates.

Categories! Why didn't I think of that?!?? Thank you, Aaron!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am taking PH124 Digital Image Management this session. Part of the assignments is to add keywords to all of my photos that I import during the class. At the end of the session, that action should be a habit. Thank you, Jaci!

I plan on transitioning all of my photos into directories named for their category. I will also start making use of Lightroom collections so that finding specific images will be that much quicker!

Friday, February 5, 2010

I have really been struggling with Principles of Digital Photography due to the hectic pace at work the last few weeks. It is not the actual course information that I am having problems with, simply having enough time (and daylight) to do the photography assignments.

I am trying to get my work schedule adjusted so that I have time during the day for photography but it's a little too late in the session. I am also trying to get some night shots (when the assignment allows for it).